So…about Tumblr.

I know everyone’s really tired of talking about all this stuff, so I’ll keep it short.

Effective immediately, I’m shutting down the Tumbleblogs. I know, shocking. And who cares anyway, right?

Well just in case someone does, that means the following tumblr blogs will be offline, effective whenever I decide to delete ’em:

kinkytails.tumblr.com (mainly a porn reblog site)

naga.toys (will be redirected to a different page, somewhere else)

naga-erotica.com (I know the ban doesn’t extend to text posts, but myeh. You might see more here or somewhere related)

Any relevant content (that I own) I want to keep from there, I’ll repost here. For my millions of loyal readers. 😉 /s

What happened anyway?

This thing’s been in the works for some time now. Since Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr back in May 2013, there’d been internal distress, culture clashes between Tumblr and Yahoo, and disagreements over how to incorporate and sell ads for the platform. Around that time, an article went up on FastCompany.com discussing the potential issues Yahoo would have with Tumblr’s penchant for adult and risque content:

I’ve been reading up about the Tumblr thing for a few days now and I stumbled upon an article that I think really sums up why Tumblr decided to kick porn off its platform: https://t.co/11bDQcP0HP#tumblrisdead

tl;dr – Federal regulations under what is known in the adult industry as the 2257 regulation (that’d be 18 U.S.C. § 2257 to be exact) require both porn producers and porn distributors to keep detailed records (specifically: legal name and birth date) on every performer in every video and image they make or distribute.

Meet the new boss

And yeah, sure. Marissa Mayer “let Tumblr be Tumblr,” in her own words. Yahoo had a relatively hands-off approach to moderation regarding adult content throughout its Yahoo ownership. Porn flourished on Tumblr, particularly driven by the handy-dandy reblog feature. Of course, reblogging porn posts could implicate the rebloggers as porn distributors under the very broad scope of 2257. (Don’t ask me, honestly, I’m not a lawyer. And I’m not giving anyone legal advice here. You should hire an actual lawyer for that.) I personally have encountered countless porn blogs on Tumblr over the years, most of which featured an incredible amount of unattributed or straight-up stolen content (watermarks removed, repost instead of reblog, misappropriation).

Same as the old boss

Well, Yahoo doesn’t own Tumblr anymore. Not technically, anyway. In 2016, Verizon purchased both Yahoo and AOL and combined the two into a new company they called Oath. This makes Verizon technically the new boss at Tumblr these days. And as we’ve seen play out already (*cough* FCC Chairperson *cough*) over the past few years, Verizon isn’t exactly friendly when it comes to consumer consciousness…especially on the internet. They have lobbied vehemently against any Net Neutrality rules proposed by the FCC, and their own former CEO, who is now FCC Chairperson, did most of the work toward dismantling existing Net Neutrality regulations passed under the direction of previous Chairperson Tom Wheeler.

tl;dr – did you honestly expect Verizon of all companies to let you keep posting porn on Tumblr? hell no.

So now what?

Honestly I’m in no position to give advice. But if you want to know what I’m doing, I’m moving on. I basically stopped using Tumblr after my dashboard got cluttered to the point of frustration, and I never had any strong social connections on Tumblr outside of those I’d already established somewhere else. I’m gonna re-create some of the pages I had there over here, and I’ll keep using Twitter, Discord, Telegram, and Fetlife, occasionally.

Ultimately, few others will have the ease and aesthetic of a site like Tumblr, or a community perfectly happy with sharing one-pan dinner recipes alongside shibari collages, but that’s okay. It can be rebuilt, relocated, reformed, whatever re-word you want to use there. Basically, it’ll come back, one way or another, in a different form, on a different site.